We have the Ion things where I work but not the variety with the touchscreen. Normal buttons you push and water comes out. I really hope we don't pay a subscription service for them because goddamn that seems dumb.

My Sodastream makes better fizzy water anyway tbh.

"Nice attempted blast about my "drinking". I do enjoy a nice cuppa, but that is because I am a bon vivant of gregarious nature and cheery disposition." - Ab

Since this is now the "stupid buisnesses of the internet age" thread, I present to you: MoviePass!

Quote

The owners of MoviePass need another $1.2 billion.Helios and Matheson (HMNY), parent company of the popular movie subscription service, told regulators Monday that it wants to sell that much in stock and debt securities.

MoviePass exploded in popularity because of its low price. For just $10 a month, about the cost of a single movie ticket in most places, MoviePass subscribers can see one movie a day.

But the company loses money when its customers use a pass, because it must pay theaters for the tickets

This is brilliant. Lose billions selling a subscription service to movies because you are just buying tickets at face value.

Since this is now the "stupid buisnesses of the internet age" thread, I present to you: MoviePass!

Quote

The owners of MoviePass need another $1.2 billion.Helios and Matheson (HMNY), parent company of the popular movie subscription service, told regulators Monday that it wants to sell that much in stock and debt securities.

MoviePass exploded in popularity because of its low price. For just $10 a month, about the cost of a single movie ticket in most places, MoviePass subscribers can see one movie a day.

But the company loses money when its customers use a pass, because it must pay theaters for the tickets

This is brilliant. Lose billions selling a subscription service to movies because you are just buying tickets at face value.

I paid them $7.99. I saw 3 films and gave 3 friends "guest memberships" for a month that they could use to see one movie a day for a month for free. All in all, Moviepass paid $250 or so bucks for my $7.99. I quit after a month because I saw this coming and their app wasn;t working well for me.

Since this is now the "stupid buisnesses of the internet age" thread, I present to you: MoviePass!

Quote

The owners of MoviePass need another $1.2 billion.Helios and Matheson (HMNY), parent company of the popular movie subscription service, told regulators Monday that it wants to sell that much in stock and debt securities.

MoviePass exploded in popularity because of its low price. For just $10 a month, about the cost of a single movie ticket in most places, MoviePass subscribers can see one movie a day.

But the company loses money when its customers use a pass, because it must pay theaters for the tickets

This is brilliant. Lose billions selling a subscription service to movies because you are just buying tickets at face value.

Since this is now the "stupid buisnesses of the internet age" thread, I present to you: MoviePass!

Quote

The owners of MoviePass need another $1.2 billion.Helios and Matheson (HMNY), parent company of the popular movie subscription service, told regulators Monday that it wants to sell that much in stock and debt securities.

MoviePass exploded in popularity because of its low price. For just $10 a month, about the cost of a single movie ticket in most places, MoviePass subscribers can see one movie a day.

But the company loses money when its customers use a pass, because it must pay theaters for the tickets

This is brilliant. Lose billions selling a subscription service to movies because you are just buying tickets at face value.

Actually for folks who bought the pass really early, that was a savvy money-saving move. The people who are criminally stupid here are the people who invested in them or who assumed that somehow this is another case of Silicon Valley magic in the making. I heard the current CEO on NPR just a few weeks ago and the NPR interviewer was an unbelievable tool who couldn't be arsed to ask even a mildly skeptical question and then stick with it a bit.

Actually for folks who bought the pass really early, that was a savvy money-saving move. The people who are criminally stupid here are the people who invested in them or who assumed that somehow this is another case of Silicon Valley magic in the making. I heard the current CEO on NPR just a few weeks ago and the NPR interviewer was an unbelievable tool who couldn't be arsed to ask even a mildly skeptical question and then stick with it a bit.

Yeah, absolutely nothing wrong with buying a pass and using the hell out of it on the company's dime. Okay, that looked like sarcasm but I'm serious. Those guys want to buy tickets for me using their venture capital, well, thanks!

As a business guy myself, I might speculate a bit more when I have time, but honestly the only business plan I can come up with to justify MoviePass' practices would just be out-right, obvious fraud -- the kind the SEC frowns on.

Their business model was to become a monopoly and then squeeze theaters.

It can work if you have enough capital/itís hard to get into the business youíre in/there are significant network effects...

It uhhh does not otherwise. So, so long and thanks for all the movie tickets.

Yeah, but looking at it I just can't...

I mean, I've supported and come ahead in some risky ventures myself, but this one was truly underwear gnome third bullet point level of crazy. They were just never capitalized enough.

The thing is, even with the Juicero I can see the initial plan and risk. We need to sell X units for Y dollars and profit! The problem is they couldn't sell X units for Y dollars and the plan failed, but that's marketing (and a lot of other problems I'm simplifying I know, but most of their problems could have been fixed by somebody forcibly pulling heads from asses at some early stage of the venture).

Same thing with Facebook and Twitter and maybe Snapchat (haven't looked at that one really). I know it's the thing to bash them, but I could see a clear path to money for all of them. Facebook wasn't even that risky.

But as far as I can see the only justification for MoviePass was to funnel venture capital into the pockets of the founders -- I am assuming the CEO is paying himself a nice salary? It just never had a chance in hell of monopolizing the market, and that latest infusion of five million... Why oh why?

They were never planning on making money directly off the subscriptions themselves. though there was some hope that subscribers in areas within cheaper movie tickets would offset a bit the prices in the more expensive areas. It was about the data that was being collected about their users and what they could use/sell it for. In fact the switch to the ultra-cheap a-movie-a-day monthly subscription plan happened because an analytics firm acquired a majority stake in the company. They were also angling for a cut of the concession profits (apparently MoviePass users spend more on concessions).

They were never planning on making money directly off the subscriptions themselves. though there was some hope that subscribers in areas within cheaper movie tickets would offset a bit the prices in the more expensive areas. It was about the data that was being collected about their users and what they could use/sell it for. In fact the switch to the ultra-cheap a-movie-a-day monthly subscription plan happened because an analytics firm acquired a majority stake in the company. They were also angling for a cut of the concession profits (apparently MoviePass users spend more on concessions).

I had considered the data gathering aspect, but possibly because I'm not in that business I undervalue it (or maybe I'm just a crusty luddite). But in any case, it would appear that they did overvalue it themselves.

But thanks for that link. I'll read it a bit later. Should be entertaining...

I don't even think they were planning to make money ever on anything. This was straight up, "Some VC people will give us some money, we need to make some money, let's convince them this is another magical internetz disruption model, thanks for the money, see ya." Not even at the level of really massive, ballsy fraud like Theranos.

They were never planning on making money directly off the subscriptions themselves. though there was some hope that subscribers in areas within cheaper movie tickets would offset a bit the prices in the more expensive areas. It was about the data that was being collected about their users and what they could use/sell it for. In fact the switch to the ultra-cheap a-movie-a-day monthly subscription plan happened because an analytics firm acquired a majority stake in the company. They were also angling for a cut of the concession profits (apparently MoviePass users spend more on concessions).

Except that itís bullshit. The value of a single data point is not 10 fucking dollars and it would have to be in order for ďmaking money on the dataĒ to make sense. Facebook makes 5 dollars a month or year (I donít recall which) per user and anyone thought that the data on MP was going to make the difference!? They also have to compete with Netflix selling the same type of data.

While I'm sure attendance will drop for a while after MoviePass dies I won't be too sad given how they turned theater staff everywhere into unpaid tech support for their shitty app. Running a place where the majority of the customers are seniors, it's like having to explain technology to your parents 20 times a night not to mention the people who don't understand the distinction that it's a 3rd party company and thus not my fault when the shit doesn't work properly.

When I first heard about MoviePass, I thought it WAS something the theater company was doing (i.e. it was a Cinemark thing). That would be the only way this thing could make any money is if the theaters themselves are basically offering unsold tickets. That a third-party company was trying to make this work paying full price to theater companies for the tickets (rather than working out some deal for unused tickets) is just a fucking retarded idea from step 1, regardless of whatever other revenue you might get from ads in the app or data collection sales. There's just nothing in this app that makes any sense for any one other than the consumers wanting to get cheap tickets.

When I first heard about MoviePass, I thought it WAS something the theater company was doing (i.e. it was a Cinemark thing). That would be the only way this thing could make any money is if the theaters themselves are basically offering unsold tickets. That a third-party company was trying to make this work paying full price to theater companies for the tickets (rather than working out some deal for unused tickets) is just a fucking retarded idea from step 1, regardless of whatever other revenue you might get from ads in the app or data collection sales. There's just nothing in this app that makes any sense for any one other than the consumers wanting to get cheap tickets.

See, that makes sense. "We'll offer you basically free seats to movies that we're still showing, but aren't even half full, and frankly we'll make it back and more on concessions". I mean the average person is gonna think "Hey, I didn't spend 10 bucks a person to see this movie, let's splurge on the 500% markup snacks!"

Joys of moving out of the US in 2012. I had no idea movie pass even existed till this thread.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

I've worked with cruise lines in the past (before 9/11 of course) who made crazy money, relatively speaking, by using their web site to post deals on rooms that were going unsold. These empty rooms were making them some money over cost precisely because they were rooms that would have made them zero money if they hadn't been sold, and at the time, posting that kind of stuff online just wasn't done. Theaters and/or an appmaker probably could make a decent return on an app that sold tickets for cost+ some number for seats that are unsold if one could solve the problem of managing the inventory and acquiring the customer. It might even be doable for a monthly subscription price with the upfront caveat being that 3D/XD/first-week releases would not be available on the app.

This shit, though? It's crazy pants and any investors who paid money into it deserve to lose their shit. ALL THEIR SHIT.